Chicago Ideas Week: A call to radically change children's education

One view: Why future generations might ask 'What were these people thinking?' on education

Children shouldn’t go to school as we know it but should instead play and explore with other children, without adult restrictions and guidelines.

That was perhaps the most provocative perspective on disruptive educational innovation offered Wednesday at a Chicago Ideas Week event called “Education: The End of School.”

Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College, lamented the institution of “forced education,” which he said inhibits rather than enhances growth and learning.

Gray is the author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.” An evolutionary psychologist, he believes children are wired to teach themselves what they need to know and that they need unlimited freedom to explore. He emphasized “unlimited.”

“It takes time to try out different things,” he said. “It takes time to get bored, to overcome boredom, to find your passion. And it takes time to really delve into your passion. You can’t interrupt that with bells, telling people constantly what to do, and expect people to really develop a passion.”

He pointed to the Sudbury Valley School, in Framingham, Mass., which has been running since 1968. The school has no curriculum, no tests and no grades, and children are “expected to decide what they want to learn,” he said.

The key to this model is age-mixing, Gray said. When older and younger children play together, valuable lessons pass back and forth. Older children teach skills, like reading, that are necessary to play games, and younger children teach the older ones “to care, and be nurturers and leaders.”

Gray said students from this school have performed well in college, and many credit the school with qualities like self-direction and self-motivation.

“I am absolutely sure that someday people are going to look back at us now, and they’re going to say: ‘What were those people thinking?’” Gray said. “Why on Earth did they ever believe that coercion is essential for education. That’s like believing you have to force people to eat, or you have to force them to breathe.”

Also speaking at the event was Greg Gage, a neuroscientist and co-founder of Backyard Brains, a teaching tool that demonstrates neuroscience to middle school students.

Gage demonstrated the machine in dramatic fashion, placing sensors and electrical wires on two audience volunteers, then showing that one volunteer’s brain could control rudimentary arm movements in the other volunteer.

Gage pointed out that he had to study for many years before he could get access to equipment that could show him how the brain works. He said that made little sense to him.

“Astronomers don’t have to go to school for years to get access to a telescope,” he said.

Other speakers included:

Victor Saad, who created his own education instead of going to graduate school, convincing people and companies to let him help with projects, then sharing on his blog what he learned. Out of this grew the Experience Institute, an educational program that allows students to explore their passions.

Beth Schmidt, who was teaching high school in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood. When she assigned a paper and only 10 percent of her students turned in work, she shifted gears, asking students to tell her “something you are passionate about.” More than 85 percent turned in papers, many of which began with some form of: “No one has ever asked me what my passion is.” Schmidt founded Wishbone, which raises money to send low-income students to out-of-school programs that let them explore their passion.

Ramona Pierson, who was badly injured in a car accident when she was 22. She was blind for 11 years and had to teach herself how to speak again. Pierson co-founded Declara, which develops personalized learning technology.